“So low?” Lots of people and lots of governments have faked deaths. It’s not a particularly heinous or rare phenomenon. But wait, the Palestinians have done much worse: they’ve killed their own children and then made a media circus of trying to blame Israel.

Or wait, maybe the Israeli accusation of fakery is itself the indication of a horrifying new nadir. An Israeli report has concluded that Muhammad al-Dura, the 12-year-old Palestinian whose death in 2000 in Gaza was captured by a French public TV channel, was not killed by Israelis – and may in fact not be dead at all.

Back then, a short film of Muhammad and his father, both caught in a shootout, trying helplessly to shelter against a barrage of gunfire, was narrated by French Channel 2 correspondent Charles Enderlin and relayed around the world, turning the boy into a symbol of the brutality of the second intifada and the Israeli occupation. Now, Israel says those same images are yet more proof of a global campaign to delegitimise Israel – and are, additionally, attempts to invoke theblood libel.

And so begins another ugly bout of the endless propaganda disease that is so endemic to this conflict. Israel is reported to have killed 1,397 Palestinian children not involved in hostilities since the start of the second intifada, according to the NGODefence for Children International in Palestine, but there are no investigations into their deaths because none have been as emblematic as Muhammad.

I’m in favor of an investigation of all of them, but I doubt that many of these statistics will hold up to scrutiny. B’tselem, whose figures are considerably lower,itself has a serious reliability problem. In any case I’m willing to bet that (had we serious evidence) we would find:

that the number is greatly inflated by including older teenagers (16-17) who are often combatants

that a goodly number were killed in situations where their lives were deliberately endangered by Palestinian combatants firing at Israel from behind them

There is perhaps no society on earth with as dark a history ofpromoting a child death cult, sacrificing its children, encouraging its children to seek death, praising those who die, than the Palestinians. Any serious investigation here will not go well for the Palestinians, who systematically, indeed ghoulishly exploit the children whose deaths they cause.

Those images of his terrified face seconds before his death were relayed around the world and are now burned into so many hearts: there are postage stamps of him, parks and streets named after him and screen-grab posters of that terrible moment raised on roads across the Arab and Muslim world.

And the most likely explanation for the terror is that Palestinian marksmen were firing bullets over their heads (but very close). Their expressions suggest that this was not what they had signed up for.

The opening scene: the circular cloud over their heads indicates a bullet from head on, not from a 30 degree angle (i.e., from the Israeli position)

Shabi:

This investigation, commissioned by Binyamin Netanyahu last year, seems intended only to give fuel to rightist Israel supporters – any report seeking to get closer to the truth might have bothered to speak to Muhammad’s father, or Enderlin, or France’s Channel 2. Instead, what this document provides is spin and no new evidence. It has cued a flood of commentary, about lying Palestiniansand a hostile foreign media, from rightwing Israeli commentators.

If my take needs Al Durah as a symbol of Israeli brutality, I don’t care if its been faked,it’s true. If the Israelis paint Al Durah as a symbol of Palestinian malevolence and journalistic incompetence, they must be lying.

Shabi:

But what stands out, yet again, is the disregard for anything Palestinians might have to contribute to the story. In effect, this report is saying to Palestinians: your words, your pain and your losses are insignificant, erasable bumps in this narrative.

Secondly, given that Palestinians systematically try to weaponize their pain against Israel, even when other Palestinians directly caused it (see above and below), it’s really a bit much for you to get indignant when someone tries to call a halt to the charade.

It is no wonder that Muhammad’s father, Jamal al-Dura, has said: “What saddens me is that I feel alone in the face of the Israeli propaganda machine …”, going on to lament a lack of support from either the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah or the Hamas government in Gaza.

I would take that as a sign that even the PA and Hamas aren’t willing to take this one on. “Everyone” – even (or especially) the Palestinian elites know this is a fake.

Shabi:

With this investigation, Israel’s government exposes its obsession with trying to win the propaganda war, as though this will magically make everything OK. Netanyahu has called the al-Dura incident part of the “ongoing, mendacious campaign to delegitimise Israel”. But the problem is that nothing could possibility delegitimise Israel more than its prolonged and oppressive occupation of the Palestinian people – the escalating deaths;

Escalating? Actually deaths in this conflict are exceptionally low. You want “escalating deaths” try Syria next door, where in less than three years more people have been killed (70,000) than in the entire Arab-Israeli conflict over 65 years.

Shabi:

…the daily, grinding humiliation.

Ladies in a Gaza supermarket, humiliated in their open air prison.

Shabi:

The longer it continues, the more such attempts to obfuscate or detract from this reality – rather than bring about its end – will only make matters worse.

This is not reality that you’re talking about. This is a constructed lethal narrative, supported by statements that fly directly in the face of reality. (E.g., the Palestinians under occupation have the highest life expectancy, lowest infant mortality, andhighest rate of higher education, than any other Arabs in the Middle East, except Israeli Arabs). Your article just illustrates the kind of reality-defying narrative that suits your purposes, the very epitome of the Al Durah Journalism that the Israeli report critiques.

Shabi:
“It has cued a flood of commentary, about lying Palestinians and a hostile foreign media, from rightwing Israeli commentators.”

Yes – but the commentary about lying Israelis has hardly been a trickle either, has it Ms Shabi? Her article itself is an example thereof.

That said: does anybody know why the investigation did not consult the father and the French reporter? Of course their personal involvement would arguably comprimise their testimony – but witnesses they remain.

Hold on, pretz. The general principle (in democratic societies at any rate) is “innocent until proven guilty”. It is encumbent on the accusers of Israel to prove that it did occur, and that Israeli soldiers did deliberately shoot a cowering child (as is alleged).

In English law (at any rate) the standard for criminal cases (such as this) is “beyond reasonable doubt”. The questions raised by Karsenty and others have raised far more than an element of reasonable doubt about the prosecution case. Wouldn’t you agree?

I suppose you could turn this around and say that it is for Karsenty et al to prove that Enderlin etc staged the event. OK, but in civil claims, the standard of proof is lower – that of “balance of probabilities”. I would say (and indeed the French courts would seem to agree) that on the evidence, the balance of probabilities is that this event either did not occur at all or at least did not occur in the manner it has been alleged to have occurred.

There are no such nuances in the coverage of this incident in the Arab world. There, Al Dura is simply a martyr and a child vicitim of deliberate Israeli brutality.

There is no 100% in these cases but anyone who only once in his/her life was involved in a shooting incident (not the Guardian’s armchair warriors) would know that even if the child was killed by IDF fire the soldiers had no way to know that they are shooting at civilians. Their position was about 80-100 m from the wall where the al-Durahs took cover behind a barrel in the shadow of the wall, and the soldiers were under fire from the same general direction. I really would like to meet a person who when being fired at – knowingly directs his own weapon to a harmless target wasting “hundreds of bullets” and despeartely needed time to kill a child and doesn’t try to neutralize first those who are threatening his/her life.
To make the long story short – even if Muhammad al-Durah was killed by the Israelis it happened in a very dangerous combat situation and the death of Muhammad was absolutely unintentional.

How about the inability for the Palestinians to provide a body belonging to a child who could be identified via DNA as Muhammad Al-Dura for starters?

Despite many attempts over the years to verify the claims around this incident, no Palestinian hospital has ever produced records of a child dying that day other than a six year old who died of illness, not gunshot wounds. Bear in mind that currently, Arafat’s remains have been exhumed to prove his death in 1994 was due to polonium poisoning administered by agents of Israel — an entirely ludicrous enterprise solely intended as a distraction for whatever immediate end on the part of Fatah loyalists.

Charles Enderlin and the Palestinians have a whole lot of proving to go on here.

Peter: it was German media that first deduced that in order for the child to have been killed by bullets fired by the IDF from their position, although proximate to Karmi Crossing, the IDF would have had to have bullets capable of making 90 degree turns and, so far as anyone knows, the IDF isn’t equipped with such magical bullets.

The other issue unaddressed here was the lengthy amount of footage that the French news agency steadfastly refused to produce in court to verify that anyone died.

Pretz. When Adam (and others) criticize the Guardian for jumping to conclusions, it is usually because they publish opinion or speculation about the causes of an event, its narrative or its perpetrators AS FACT in the immediate aftermath (see Jenin, Mavi Marmara, Al Dura, the vidoe that “caused” the riot that killed the US diplomat in Lybia etc etc).

In this case, the Al Dura incident took place many years ago, the evidence has been discussed and reviewed and all sides have had plenty of opportunity to have their say. Adam has come to a conclusion on that basis.

Disagree with his conclusion if you like, but this is not equivalent to the Guardian’s eagerness to rush to judgment (always, it seems, against Israel).

pretzelberg, the first thing that I thought when I first heard about the incident way back when it happened was (as the IDF assumed) the boy had been killed in the crossfire. Any claims that the IDF deliberately targeted him are completely ridiculous as Peter and others have pointed out).

Soon after that I noticed the shape of the bullet holes in the wall. One doesn’t have to be a ballistics expert to know that those holes were caused by bullets fired pretty much perpendicular to the wall, not at an angle (I’ve mis-knocked enough nails into enough walls to know what that looks like). Not to mention the impossibility of bullets scooting round the barrel into the wall.

I’ve been following this story for a long time now, and from the beginning thought that Enderlin’s and his stringer’s claims were fraudulent. Those claims were taken at face value by much of the world and media. Neither the footage of the incident nor the voice over proved a single thing. But from Adam you want 100% assurance that the whole story is a fraud. I find that strange. I wouldn’t qualify it as a mere assumption on Adam’s (or my) part, but rather a considered opinion.
Go see Dr. Landes’ site ‘the second draft’ for more.

But from Adam you want 100% assurance that the whole story is a fraud. I find that strange.

Adam’s made a pretty serious assumption. He might well be right – but who’s to know for sure?
Why is it “strange” to point out that this merely a belief rather than a fact?
(especially within the context of calling out the G. on premature conclusions)

The fraud has been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt to any reasonable person. You can read the details in blogs like Richard Landes “Augean Stables”. The French media tried desperately to cover it up and protect Enderlin as one of their own – even though he has some kind of dual Israeli-French citizenship, in their efforts to protect France’s Channel 2 he was protected as a Frenchman by the French media establishment and sued Karsenty not on the basis of the facts, but rather as a kind of libel suit for daring to question Enderlin’s integrity (or lack thereof).

Bingo. This article by Shabi is a truly astonishing attempt at moral inversion. Everything she says is entirely the opposite of the objective truth.

Her analysis of the centrality of the Al Dura image and its pervasion in the Arab world hardly demonstrates how untouchable it is. In fact, it neatly demonstrates the importance of determining the truth (or otherwise) of the event.

Some interesting facts about the injuries of jamal (the father):Jamal was reported to have been struck by several bullets, some of which were removed from his arm and pelvis. Dr Ahmed Ghadeel of the Al-Shifa Hospital said Jamal received multiple wounds from high-velocity bullets striking his right elbow, his right thigh, and several locations in the lower part of both legs; his femoral artery was also cut. He was filmed by Talal Abu Rahma for France 2 at the hospital the day after the incident. Dr Ghadeel was also interviewed, showing x-rays of Jamal’s right elbow and right pelvis. Jamal’s Israeli employer offered to have him taken to an Israeli hospital, but the Palestinian Authority, or Jamal himself, declined the offer. He was flown instead to the King Hussein Medical Centre in Amman, Jordan, where he was visited by King Abdullah. Doctors there said his right hand would be permanently paralyzed. The nature of his injuries was questioned in 2007 by an Israeli doctor, who maintained he had treated him for some of the scars presented years earlier….
….On December 13, 2007, Israel’s Channel 10 aired an interview with Dr. Yehuda David, a physician at Tel Hashomer hospital near Tel Aviv. David told Channel 10 that he had treated Jamal Al-Dura in 1994 for knife and axe wounds to his arms and legs sustained during a Palestinian gang attack. David said the scars Jamal presented as bullet wounds from the 2000 incident were actually scars from a tendon repair operation that David performed in 1994.

“This investigation, commissioned by Binyamin Netanyahu last year, seems intended only to give fuel to rightist Israel supporters…”
Oh yes, Rachel, the old “right wing” angle, so to speak, is where the truth train always goes rolling off the tracks with regards to this conflict at CiF.

Rachel is such a Dhimmi! She gets paid from the Guardian to write Shit about the country of her birth. About her romantization of life of jews in arab countries, I wonder this: how old were her parents, when they left Iraq in 1951?

Brillitant post by Richard Landes. If you posted this on the Guaridian, it would be removed.

There is perhaps no society on earth with as dark a history of promoting a child death cult, sacrificing its children, encouraging its children to seek death, praising those who die, than the Palestinians. Any serious investigation here will not go well for the Palestinians, who systematically, indeed ghoulishly exploit the children whose deaths they cause.

That’s because it’s blatantly NOT TRUE about Israelis! I am not a fan of our Barry – his views are far more extreme than mine – and his comments can be criticised, but you have chosen the wrong one here, Pretz.

Whether or not you agree with the manner in which Barry sets out his views, you cannot say that the Israeli and Palestinian societies have the same attitude to death, of children or otherwise, and there is clear and devastating evidence of Palestinian children being taught to hate Israelis and Jews, being used as human shields, being pushed to the front line of protests/riots and as propaganda tools. These are facts which are evidently NOT true of Israel.

Fatah promised the boy $22 and 72 virgins if he blew himself up.
Sent To Die (March, 2004).

If you needed more evidence of Islam’s vile and heinous nature, the cover story from the March 25, 2004 edition NY Daily News certainly obliged. For $22.00 and the promise of 72 virgins in Allah’s paradise, a mildly retarded Palestinian boy was coerced into becoming a human bomb by Islamic clerics. Compelling young children to do their dying for them seems to have become a favorite tactic of the Islamic fundamentalists in control of Yasser Arafat’s political party called Fatah.

Islamic Imams and warlords are cowards, hiding behind little boys. They corrupt, coerce, and recruit children with promises of perverted rewards, while they themselves remain in the comfort and safety of their mosques and madrasas. No doubt they know Muhammad’s dogma is fraudulent and morally bankrupt and that Islam is simply a means to wealth and power.

“We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”

Would anyone here quote from an article entitled “A study in Jewish Duplicity and Media Indiffference”?

No, of course not – so why is it acceptable to quote from a CAMERA article which spits such racism?

Especially when the whole concept is so thoroughly nasty – Palestinians are never known to have murdered their own children … and in fact, the reason that Israeli forces operate “human shields” (another video of them doing it came out recently) in defiance even of their own courts, is that Palestinians will not risk injury to other Palestinians!

Meanwhile, Zionists deliberately put their own children at risk in settlements condemned as illegal by everyone in the world.

They even boast of threatening and harming the lives of their own children, as in the film “Exodus” when they’re forced onto the deck of the ship to die in the sun!

Wrong again ‘Nick’
I, for one, do not! So the settlements are not condemned as illegal by EVERYONE in the World.
Are you going to carry on making sweeping and stupid statements or has the Nurse forgotten to give you your medication today?

In early September 1967, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol was considering granting the first approval for settlements in the West Bank and Golan Heights, conquered three months earlier in the Six-Day War.

… The legal counsel of the Foreign Ministry, Theodor Meron, was asked whether international law allowed settlement in the newly conquered land. In a memo marked “Top Secret,” Mr. Meron wrote unequivocally, “My conclusion is that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”

In the detailed opinion that accompanied that note, Mr. Meron explained that the Convention — to which Israel was a signatory — forbade an occupying power from moving part of its population to occupied territory. The Golan, taken from Syria, was “undoubtedly ‘occupied territory,’ ” he wrote.

Mr. Meron took note of Israel’s diplomatic argument that the West Bank was not “normal” occupied territory, because the land’s status was uncertain. The prewar border with Jordan had been a mere armistice line, and Jordan had annexed the West Bank unilaterally. But he rejected that argument for two reasons. …

“Lebensraum”, huh? Well, you should know, being the Nazi.
As for “desperation”, “Nick”, I don’t think we’ve even got the instruments to chart the low you’ve already hit.
Suffice it to say that the fanatic here is the only one employing Nazi analogies — You.

And Israel murders 1000s of Palestinian children – including 80 in sequence after the murder of Muhammed al-Durah before a single Israeli child died – why would the Palestinians need to kill one of their own to try and get Israel blamed for it?

Palestinian Christians are protesting the occupation, which has devastated their communities and ethnically cleansed most of them.

In Gaza, one of those Christians is (or was) running a school that is mostly Muslim. Israel’s response? They told him they wanted him out and would never let him back.

I don’t know how the Palestinians cope with the genocide being imposed on them, thrown into a cramped space and shot at.

But I know some of what the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto felt impelled to do and no decent person would ever criticise people in such a situation.

This from a Holocaust survivor, IDF veteran and chemistry Professor in Israel:

Before the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (the planning of which only started after the extermination of the majority of Jews in Warsaw), the Jewish underground killed, with perfect justification, every Jewish collaborator they could find. If they had not done so the Uprising could never have started.

The majority of the population of the Ghetto hated the collaborators far more than the German Nazis. Every Jewish child was taught, and this saved the lives of some them “if you enter a square from which there are three exits, one guarded by a German SS man, one by an Ukrainian and one by a Jewish policeman, then you should first try to pass the German, and then maybe the Ukrainian, but never the Jew”.

I’m sorry, my first response to this has popped up in a different place half way up the page.

However, it has given me the opportunity to check some of the links on the “Elder of Zyon” blog (from 2012) and all of them are dead.

I’d be very surprised if UNRWA wants anything objectionable to Israel to appear in its literature – but with Israel completely controlling who can visit/work in Gaza for the UN its not impossible that filth is being forced on them.

The good news is that, for the first time ever, Israel was forced to pay for the damage it did to UN property in “Cast Lead”. Still not compensated the victims of the Concentration Camps, however.

There are to many Guardian supporters like Nice that actually would have loved to participate in murdering Jews.
You have Muslims like Hamas official Ahmad Bahr, (deputy speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council) who regularly call for the annihilation of theJews: “Oh, Allah, destroy the Jews and their supporters” and “the Americans and their supporters. Oh, Allah, count them one by one, and kill them all, without leaving a single one.”

There are to many Guardian supporters like Nick that actually would have loved to participate in murdering Jews.
You have Muslims like Hamas official Ahmad Bahr, (deputy speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council) who regularly call for the annihilation of theJews: “Oh, Allah, destroy the Jews and their supporters” and “the Americans and their supporters. Oh, Allah, count them one by one, and kill them all, without leaving a single one.”

UNRWA’s official educational vision is:
“An UNRWA education system which develops the full potential of Palestine Refugees to enable them to be confident, innovative, questioning, thoughtful, tolerant and open minded, upholding human values and religious tolerance, proud of their Palestine identity and contributing positively to the development of their society and the global community”.
But UNRWA does not only teach secular subjects, as it implies. In Gaza at least, UNRWA teaches Islam.

And some of that education is far from tolerant.

On the UNRWA jobs website, it notes that there are interviews this coming week for teachers in Gaza. Only two specific subjects of expertise are listed: English and “religious education.”

Indeed, the Palestinian Arab UNRWA site has curricula, sample exams and more for religious education.

Here is a photo essay for one school that had a Quran Day, where they were encouraged to memorize the Quran. A similar ceremony from this past May can be seen here.

Quran lessons can be found in UNRWA school sites.

UNRWA social studies sites talk about the importance of Jerusalem to Muslims and Christians, but not for Jews.

The Maghazi Prep School for Girls makes everyone know it has an explicitly Quranic agenda. It also mentions that its vision is to help the girls raise a generation of people who will “defend their country.”

And this is only the tip of the iceberg.

At the Nusseirat Primary School website, we see a lesson on honoring one’s parents:
It was narrated that Abu Abdul Rahman Abdullah bin Masood may Allah be pleased with him said: I asked the Prophet peace be upon him: which work does God prefer He answered: Saying prayers on time. I said: Then what? He said: honoring one’s parents. I said: Then what? He said: Jihad in the way of Allah. Agreed.

…You who sees what is happening to the Muslim Ummah everywhere .. I see the daily violations of the Muslims .. O of rending his heart when you hear the news of Muslims in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries of the Jihad .. you who wish to join the ranks of the Mujahideen and Jihad with them against the Jews and the Crusaders .. you who want to jihad hard but you can not ..
Here is a poem about how Zionists raped Palestine and how the author will return to Jaffa.

There are essays about the beauty of becoming a martyr.

There are stories of young men who asked their parents for permission to wage jihad and who died heroically.

All of these can be found in official UNRWA school websites. Many of the school logos include the wreath symbolizing the UN. Some girls’ school sites, like this Bureij girls’ junior high school seem to have not a single student without a hijab.

And all of them directly contradict what UNRWA’s stated educational standards are.

Are Palestinian Christians forced to attend mandatory Quran classes run by UNRWA? Should the UN be in the Islamic education business? How much of UNRWA’s budget goes towards “religious education?” Are Western donors to UNRWA even aware that they are funding these lessons?

Shouldn’t someone ask UNRWA about this?

UPDATE: Here’s a document that talks about the “cruelty, cunning and vileness of Jews” on a UNRWA school website.

And here’s a photo of a Quran celebration at another UNRWA school – with the UN logo clearly visible.

After some hesitation to decide whether you belong to the category of liars or maybe BSers, finally got some expert help. You belong definitely to the later group.Whereas a liar must know the truth in order to conceal it, a BSer couldn’t care less one way or the other. His goal is not to conceal or reveal but to make an impression — to advance an agenda.